Dom3minions.com MAPs

[Gandalf Parker]

OK here is a dirty version of TINY maps.
Here is the directory they got put into
http://game.dom3minions.com/maps/T/

the index of all of them is
http://game.dom3minions.com/maps/T/_index.jpg

For now you have to count and guess to find the right file.
So the second in on the second row would by tiny07 so there is a tiny07.jpg (for viewing only), a tiny07.tga and tiny07.map files, and a tiny07.zip which has both the tga and map together for download.

Eventually I will make an html page like this one
http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...humbnails.html
where you can click a map to see the bigger version then click again to download the zip. But Im not too good at making webpages so that takes me quite awhile. I can whip out something to fill the directory but it takes much longer to get it webbed.

Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

Same thing for the Large maps that were requested.
They are right now being put into
http://game.dom3minions.com/maps/L/

http://game.dom3minions.com/maps/L/_index.jpg
should be a thumbnail map of all of them when they are done

http://www.dom2minions.com/~dominion...humbnails.html
is an idea of what it will be like eventually for usefulness

[Gandalf Parker]

Once you figure out the sloppy methods you can also raid
http://game.dom3minions.com/maps/pipeline/
for the corridor challenge map idea

Gandalf Parker

[Gandalf Parker]

and also
http://game.dom3minions.com/maps/modules/
which didnt really pan out. I was hoping that creating pieces of maps would let you select, paste together, and edit. If you think its useful then lets chat. But they should be playable as they are.

The idea was that if I stacked a land, water, land then it would be a nice contest map. And a snow, temperate, snow might make a world view.

Stacking them would make it easier to renumber without losing the terrain and neighbor info. I think I kept them at an even number of provinces (100? 200?). But editing the image to smooth the transitions turned out to me more than I felt like doing. My next hope is a "seed" function where I can create the same map with different variables and cut-n-paste pieces of them into a whole.

Gandalf Parker

[Ballbarian]

You have been busy Gandalf!
Downloaded a large map (large08) and noted that the image size is scaled down (to 640x480) and the image quality is severely degradated compared to the one you uploaded previously. Was this intentional to conserve space on your server?

[Gandalf Parker]

No I tend to try and size the maps appropriate to the number of provinces. It wouldnt make much sense to have 1500 provinces on 200x200, nor having 50 provinces on 2000x2000

What would you like it at?
Since its scripted I can easily change the two numbers and kick it off again? Let me know what you want. If it gets too specific I will just put yours in a seperate directory for you. I used to do that for a number of Dom2 map developers.

[Gandalf Parker]

Water nations and game maps are a big pain to try and get right. As a person who makes and selects maps continually Im up against this all the time. The games logic does actually try to consider the following:
A) Nations should not be too close to each other.
B) Nations should not start out with too few neighbor provinces.
C) Land nations should not have water neighbor provinces.
D) Water nations should not have land neighbor provinces.
E) Many nations have special terrain or theme requirements (water, land, mountains, swamp, wasteland, coastal).
F) No land nation should be placed in the center of a large area of one particular terrain so that it doesnt have quick access to multiple terrain benefits in the capital.
G) And absolutely DO NOT take too much time trying to achieve A thru F

It might seem as though you have never seen that happen. And unless you play on large maps thats understandable. Some maps make it hard, some make it impossible. A map with enough provinces to allow the game to get completely thru its choice selection process without it giving up tends to be a map too large for most peoples idea of a good game. There is definitely an advantage to maps where a human has done some work on setting provinces as start, no-start, or spec-start.

And how much water is enough? If I want 10 players at 10 provs each before mandatory war, then 100 prov map MIGHT be able to place everyone well. But what if 3 water nations join? 30 water? If there is one small ocean then the D rules pushes them to the middle and too close to each other. And what if only 1 water nation joins? 1 nation with 30 provs to the land nations 10? Cries of unfair!

My favorite maps, which rarely cause me problems, are like these.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMap...rs/keepers.htm
But few people want to play games that big. Maybe some of these..
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Keepers/index.htm
but again the smaller you get, or smaller provs-to-player ratio, the less likely that everyone will be happy with the games placement of capitals unless someone hand-massages the map.

Interesting point (which I just realized myself):
When playing a solo game, Dom3 has you select the map first then the nations. But in server mode, it waits for the people to select their nations and then has you select the map. Maybe Johan was hinting.

[Gandalf Parker]

Another interesting note for those who are curious. Altho it might not seem that way, the game DOES try to avoid duplicate province names when selecting them for a map. On each province, it tries 25 times to find a non-dupe name before giving up. On a really large map its rather surprising how fast its able to do that. But obivously when the games map limits were increased, the file for prov names was not. This is again another place where the best results involve hand massaging it, or using a 3rd party program to put names on every province.